World Happiness Report

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. In its previous three editions the report has documented that well-being and happiness are critical indicators of a nation's economic and social development. In the report, published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), leading experts in several fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations. "The aspiration of society is the flourishing of its members," said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University. "This report gives evidence on how to achieve societal well-being. It's not by money alone, but also by fairness, honesty, trust, and good health. The evidence here will be useful to all countries as they pursue the new Sustainable Development Goals."

Program

9.00 Opening remarks - Luigi Cannari, Bank of Italy

9.30-16.00 Presentation of the Report

9.30 10.15John Helliwell, University of British Columbia, Haifang Huang, University of Alberta and Shun Wang, KDI School of Public Policy and ManagementThe Distribution of World Happiness

Discussant: Paolo Sestito, Bank of Italy

10.15-11.00Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University, Editor of the ReportHappiness and the Sustainable Development Goals
Discussant: Guido de Blasio, Bank of Italy

11.00-11.45Richard Layard, London School of EconomicsInstitutional issues in the development of secular ethics
Discussant: Vincenzo Atella, University of Rome Tor Vergata

11.45-12.00 Coffee break

12.00-12.35Leonardo Becchetti, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Luisa Corrado, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Paola Samà, University of Rome Tor VergataInside the happiness blackbox
Discussant: Alois Stutzer, University of Basel

12.35-13.10Luigino Bruni, LUMSA University, Stefano Zamagni, University of BolognaThe history of happiness: from Adam Smith to the Easterlin Paradox
Discussant: Filomena Maggino, University of Florence

13.10-14.10 Lunch

14.10-14.45Luca Stanca, University of Milano Bicocca, The Geography of Parenthood and Well-being: Do Children Make Us Happy, Where, and Why?
Discussant: Andrew Clark, Paris School of Economics

14.45-15.20Luca Crivelli, SUPSI Lugano, Mario Lucchini, University of Milano Bicocca, Sara della Bella, Università della Svizzera italianaTesting the ability of the life satisfaction scale to synthesize the multidimensionality of the well-being space: an application of Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) to SHARE data.
Discussant: Conchita D’Ambrosio, University of Luxembourg

Why life satisfaction and, more generally, subjective wellbeing measures, should be taken always more seriously into account by politicians as indicators of limits of objective statistics and ways for integrating them as it is done in many other fields of economics and social sciences (ie. customer satisfaction, workers satisfaction)….